Tuesday’s New Book Releases
I know, I know. You’ve sworn not to read any more of my blog posts until I learn how to get images in here. Fear not! My website goddess (you should hire her, discounts for you, discount for me!) has made me a video on How To Do Everything and I will watch it, I swear, this week.
But I have deadlines and events and more to do first, so today, all apologies, another image-free book-release post. These are my picks from books publishing today, June 20, 2023 (they also appear in my sub-Substack, Book Wag, in case you’d like your bookish content wrapped in delightfully meta Culture Wag content).
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz
Just because you like a sexy read doesn’t mean you’re into romance novels. Why shouldn’t a suspenseful thriller like Andrea Bartz’s new novel The Spare Room include crushing, desiring, longing. . . and a seriously hot threesome? Remember, reading about something does not mean you’re actually doing it, otherwise there would be a lot more Everest summitteers out there. Set in the Northern Virginia countryside (yes darling, we do have some here), the story follows an early-pandemic-weary Kelly as she leaves her live-in boyfriend behind in Philly and becomes a houseguest to her friend (and romance-novel author) Sabrina and Sabrina’s husband Nathan.
Cue unexpected touches, kisses, and caresses, until Kelly finds a stash of Polaroids that might signal her new bedmates’ open marriage has very very specific consequences.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
Oh, to be a first-time reader of Lorrie Moore! Prepare to have your mind blown by a writer unlike any other, whose equitable command of her thoughts and her prose cannot be taken for granted. Lorrie Moore’s work commands attention, although Moore herself never does. (For example, in this article, she wrote: “. . . the mystery involved in the act of creating a narrative is attached to the mysteries of life itself, and the creation of life itself: that we are; that there is something rather than nothing. Though I wonder whether it sounds preposterous in this day and age to say such a thing.”) Her new novel is her first in 13 years, and it’s deeply, deeply weird, involving a hospice visit, a stolen journal, dead-but-alive characters, and a cross-country road trip that Finn takes with his dead girlfriend Lily. Trust me. Thank me later.
The Glass Château by Stephen P. Kiernan
Each and every time I think “That’s it! I’m DONE with World War II novels,” along comes one that illuminates a different aspect of that conflict. Kiernan, inspired by the life of the great Marc Chagall, tells the story of Asher, whose life was reduced to ashes during the war – but whose chance also comes out of those ashes when he happens upon a French mansion making stained glass. Heavenly to look at, stained-glass windows were hellish to make, requiring an oven that heated surroundings to the point where workers could hardly bear clothing, let alone conversation. In this world of hisses and grunts, Asher slowly finds peace, making windows for the country’s bombed-out cathedrals. Unfortunately, he chooses to hide his Judaism, and secrets can act as bombs, too. Will Asher be able to claim his full identity in full peace again?
Watch Us Dance by Leila Slimani
Slimani’s previous novels, including The Nanny and Adèle, slowly and carefully unwound as narratives of women immigrants in Paris; it’s not a surprise that for this new book, the author leaves Europe for Africa, showing how a Moroccan-French family in the 1960s copes with a newly independent country and the choices it offers. Aicha Belhaj wants to attend medical school; her brother Selim wants the hippie experience. Each of them, of course, will experience highs and lows, but Slimani wants readers to see that beneath all of their individual experiences lie the racism and corruption inherent in colonial systems. Slimani has also based her story on her own family’s lives; Aicha and Selim’s parents, Mathilde and Amine, literally embody the ties between France and Morocco, which on the surface can seem sophisticated and desirable.
The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon
I picked up this one because it’s set in the Hudson Valley. . . and that quickly became the least interesting thing about Clémence Michallon’s debut thriller. On the surface, Aidan Thomas is a kindly widower with a teenaged daughter who is so well-liked that his friends and neighbors are raising money for him to compete in a 5K race. Scratch that surface, and – this is not a spoiler – you’ll discover that Aidan Thomas has been keeping a woman named Rachel hostage for so long that when his wife dies, Rachel convinces Aidan to let her live, quietly, as his purported tenant. The stakes aren’t about discovering Aidan’s evil deeds, rather they’re based on Rachel’s strategy for survival as Aidan courts a bartender named Emily and his daughter Cecilia grows increasingly uneasy with her father’s “friend” who just needs a place to stay for a while.